Letters: The economy has hurt the taxpayers, too

I support public safety and I want to support taxes required to pay for it. But I want elected officials and public administrators to know that the public is in a bind, too.

Norton Shores recently increased water rates 18 percent and now wants to increase property taxes 21.7 percent for 10 years to hire six public safety officials (Norton Shores Millage Would Make or Break Future of Public Safety, Jan. 16). Norton Shores City Administrator Mark Meyers says “Our revenues are down” and the new millage would raise about $1.6 million in the first year. But the public knows that the main reason that city revenues are down is that the public’s revenues are down worse; that more people in the private sector have of necessity already taken significant cuts to their standard of living and most people in the public sector have not; that many, many private sector employees are unemployed; and that citizens’ retirement savings and home values have been slashed; their pensions have been cut or eliminated and many places of their employment have shrunk or closed and the jobs are gone for ever.

By way of full disclosure, voters in the millage election should know that after the first millage year — during years two through ten of the new tax increase — Norton Shores property taxes would increase each year that the economy raises the value of their homes and also that the costs of the six new hires’ pensions could last 30 years after they retire. Moveover, each of the six new hires would cost about $100,000 annually for pay and benefits and total $600,000 per year, which would leave Meyers $1 million of the first year’s public safety millage to move existing public safety employees off of the existing budget and use the replaced exisitng $1 million budget for non-public safety purposes (when your property taxes increase in millage years two through ten, he would have even more non-public safety money to play with).

For Meyers to appear to use Norton Shores’ fire and crime fighters in an apparent bait-and-switch-like manner must be very, very insulting to our dedicated, hard working first-responders. If they even know about it.

Even more problematic, an apparent bait-and-switch millage could be equally as insulting to the voters in February. Voters know that all tax authorities at every level of government — federal, state, county, municipal, school district, library, community college, water district, etc. — are hounding them to increase taxes so they can get more from them. The public, however, cannot afford and will not support Meyers-like schemes to immunize the public sector against the ravages of the economy.

Meyers could seek solid ground and search for a better way to share and mitigate the public’s burden of the current economy, not add to it. A good place to start would be for him to reduce the total cost of Norton Shores government enough to equal the $600,000 required to hire the six new public safety employees. A significant move in this direction would not ravage any public employee, it would be fair, and the oversized tax increase could be avoided. But I fear that for Meyers to expect the public to immunize his branch of the vast public sector against the effects of the current economy would cause voter support for any future tax increase to decrease.